A New Art Form May Arise From the 'Myst'

Published: December 4, 1994

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The arcade is where games first seduced players, back in the pre video era when pinball was king. But with the large-scale arrival of video games in the early 80's, the arcade came into its own, offering a world of shadow and darkness: crowds gather around ominous-looking booths, peering at seemingly illicit images.

You squeeze past the crowds, past screens with screaming mutant wrestlers, past steering wheels being spun in front of rushing roads, to the sound of screeching tires, past target games, in which elaborate weapons are pointed at pop-up creatures. The sound effects and music are deliberately grating, meant to keep the player on edge; the images owe much to comic books and carnival art. If arcade games have an esthetic, it is focused on the creation of a particular kind of sexual atmosphere, tinged with anxiety; it seems to draw adolescent boys to the arcades, tapping the same impulses that once drew audiences to circus freak shows.

The arcade game is one of sudden moves and quick death. The most successful games promise mastery over that world but also guarantee failure; every player is doomed to die, and there are not enough quarters in the world to allow time to survive. Companies have staked their fortunes on the hope that players will return again and again to the scene of their deaths.

The first home video games tapped into the craze for arcades. Every game system, from Nintendo to 3DO, has its arcade-style games, tries to reproduce the spirit of that darkened room on low-definition monitors and sluggish PC's. The attempts have grown more sophisticated along with the technology. Racing-car games are more three-dimensional, and the view more internal to the car: you are there. On Super Nintendo systems, a special chip that allows quick graphics processing is used to make the game "Stunt Race" more involving, sacrificing realism of surface for the realism of movement. Sega boasts that two games for its new 32X system are identical to the arcade versions.

Every such game has a setup: you are a young pilot, a seasoned racer, an international spy; there is an invasion, an abduction, a contest, a war. Using the buttons on the controller, you must save the world or at least assert your pride. Companies have devised arcade-style accessories that replace the hand-held controller with light guns, a helmet that shoots on the word "fire," a pad with sensors the crazed player is supposed to jog on.

But the screen is the center of action and here the idea is to make the edge-of-death experience plausible, even when the image is rudimentary. The genius of a game like Tetris is that the pressure comes purely from abstract, geometric maneuvering, a race against the implacable randomness swamping the screen. Other arcade games are less subtle. Their goal is to finely focus anxiety, making it seem that there are high stakes involved. The less a game trusts its own imagination to create a game-world, the more it relies on the latest technology for creating "realistic" effects, and the more it has to make "death" seem like death, and display gore.

One recent arcade game for 3DO, "Shock Wave," makes an ersatz realism work despite a game concept that is almost a genre itself: you are a rookie pilot, shooting down aliens. It uses live actors and dialogue to punctuate the shooting game. 3DO's technology allows a feeling of space and time in realistic landscapes. This is a game I have sweated through -- at least until I was shot down. "Shock Wave" is all the more ominous because it omits the usual bad-rock soundtrack. There is just the drone of the plane's engines and the thumps of alien fire. The Home Where the Heart Pounds Faster

The biggest achievement of Nintendo and now Sega, the two reigning giants of the video-game industry, has been to transcend the arcade. Anxiety and death and danger are still there, quick reflexes are still needed, but the atmosphere is different. Each system has developed unusual games that seem to inspire communal participation; the player is not shut off in an interior world of sensation and threat but is part of a group. Observers shout out suggestions, and veterans offer help through difficult parts. These games might never have been developed without the home in mind.

Like arcade games, they have various levels of play, but here the different levels reveal radically different worlds and different ways of maneuvering; one level might be underwater and another in midair on platforms. The brilliance of Nintendo's Mario Brothers games -- in which a mustachioed plumber is ostensibly out to rescue a princess -- is that everything is serious but everything is also amusing; there is a wry wit at work as waddling turtles become forces to be reckoned with and Mario sprouts wings and flies.

The Mario games, all developed by Sigeru Miyamoto of Japan, practically define the character of the home video game. There is a world to explore and secrets hidden throughout: ways to restore life, earn magic powers, escape a deadly opponent. Magazines publish maps, hints and codes that open up hidden regions that only masters of these strange universes c b; companies staff phones with "game counselors" to help those who can't find their way out.